by Deb Shaw
The Huntington Botanical Gardens Forever stamp from the US Postal Service.
The US Post Office is honoring ten US Botanical Gardens with a new Forever stamp, released this month. The gardens at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino is one of those ten. Entitled “Beauty and Order,” the American Gardens Forever® stamps features gardens designed from 1889 through today.
Art director Ethel Kessler designed each stamp with a small but evocative photograph representing each garden, taken by Allen Rokach between 1996 and 2014.
The USPS press release and website states: “The love of gardening stretches back to the earliest years of our country, inspiring George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers to plant some of America’s most iconic colonial-era gardens. From the 19th century to today, landscape designers have continued that tradition.”
The featured gardens include:
The Huntington Botanical Gardens (California);
Biltmore Estate Gardens (North Carolina);
Brooklyn Botanic Garden (New York);
Chicago Botanic Garden (Illinois);
Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (Maine);
Dumbarton Oaks Garden (District of Columbia);
Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park (Florida);
Norfolk Botanical Garden (Virginia);
Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens (Ohio); and
Winterthur Garden (Delaware).
The “American Gardens” Forever stamps honoring ten US gardens were released by the US Post Office in May, 2020.
Millions of Americans visit public and private gardens each year.
The postal service does not receive tax dollars for operations, relying on the sale of postage, products and services for funding. Information about ordering the “American Gardens” Forever stamps can be found on USPS.com.